1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an item registration apparatus allowing smooth registration of sold-by-weight items and accounting thereof and to an account system having the item registration apparatus.
The present invention also relates to a measuring device and a measuring system, which is suitably used in the aforementioned item registration apparatus, for measuring an item and issuing a label for it.
2. Description of Related Art
In a conventional retail store such as a supermarket, a self-scanning system for improving efficiency of registration and checkout of items purchased by a customer is employed in which the customer oneself brings a mobile terminal as equipment of the store and scans code information on a label attached to each item to be purchased by the customer. According to the self-scanning system, the mobile terminal after scanning is brought together with the scanned items to an account device (POS register) by the customer and the code information stored in the mobile terminal is transferred to the account device, thereby completing the accounting of the scanned items.
On the other hand, there are sold-by-weight items (such as fruits, vegetables, and meats). As for such an item, the item of required amount is picked up from the item prepared in large quantities and is sold for a price according to the weight of the item. For the purpose of streamlining the work of selling such sold-by-weight items, a customer oneself puts an item of required amount on a measuring device to measure the weight of the item and attaches a label with code information, which is automatically issued from the measuring device after measurement. If the customer oneself should register the sold-by-weight item, the customer furthermore scans the code information of the attached label by using the mobile terminal.
In case of the aforementioned method of registering sold-by-weight items, however, the work of scanning cord information on the label for registering the item is troublesome. Further, there is a problem that scanning is sometimes impossible depending on the printed condition or the way of scanning the code information and also there may be a problem that a customer neglects of scanning the code information on the label.
In case that a customer purchases a plurality of sold-by-weight items, for example, the measuring device measures the weight of each item of an amount desired by the customer and calculates the purchased price of each item. After measuring and calculating the purchased price of the last item, the measuring device issues a label on which code information such as bar code is printed. The code information is used to obtain the total amount of purchased prices of the plurality of items being purchased by the customer and is used as information of a specific section covering the plurality of items being purchased by the customer. It should be noted that the specific section means a fruit and vegetable section in case of cabbages, cucumbers, and apples, a raw fish section in case of tunas and salmons, or the like.
In case that the customer purchases a plurality of sold-by-weight items as mentioned above so that a single label for the plurality of items is issued and the code information on the label is scanned by the mobile terminal, there is a problem that the purchased price is reported simply as sales of the specific section (for example, the fruit and vegetable section) and it is impossible manage sales of each item (for example, cabbage and apple). Especially in case of using bar codes as the code information, the problem is pronounced because the amount of information is limited.
On the other hand, another way is considerable for a case that a customer purchases a plurality of sold-by-weight items, in which the measuring device issues a label for each measurement of each item. According to this format, label for the respective items are issued and code information on these labels is scanned, whereby it is possible to manage sales of each item. In this method, however, the operation is troublesome because the customer should scan code information on a plurality of labels by using the mobile terminal. Moreover, the customer may forget which labels have been scanned.
Furthermore, when the customer registers the item by scanning code information on a label of the sold-by-weight item, the customer may mistakenly scan the code information of the label twice. In such a case, the item being purchased by the customer is registered doubly and the payment for this should be conducted based on the transaction information of doubly registered item. For this, there is a need of any means for preventing double registration of items into the mobile terminal.
Besides the aforementioned self-scanning system, conventionally, there is a typical operating method in which a customer puts items to be purchased into a shopping basket and brings the shopping basket to an account device (checkout device), and a staff standing by the account device scans code information on labels attached to the respective items so as to conduct registration and checkout, and also an operating method in which the typical operating method and the self-scanning system are mixed in the same store. Therefore, a measuring device for sold-by-weight items capable of handling any operating method is desired. That is, a measuring device for sold-by-weight items is desired which can issue rapidly and easily labels in case of using the mobile terminal and also labels in case of not using the mobile terminal even though printed conditions are different from each other.